Tuesday, September 3, 2019

I am proud to have some of my Antarctic work on display in Resounding Change: Sonic Art and the Environment,an exciting exhibition that is up this fall in the Fine Art Museum at Western Carolina Universityin Cullowee, NC.The exhibition features contemporary artistswho explore environmental issues through sound, and includes works by Matthew Burtner, Raven Chacon, Timothy M. Collins & Reiko Goto Collins, Gordon Hampton, Cheryl E. Leonard, Katie Paterson, Andrea Polli, and Lee Weisert. Audio, graphic scores, and penguin bone instruments from my compositions Lullaby for E Seals and White on White are on display. The exhibition runs August 20 - December 6, 2019.

Tuesday, January 8, 2019

I’m very pleased to announce the release of Watershed - available now via Bandcamp as a digital download or on CD. You can also get it from iTunes or CD Baby. Although not a collection of Antarctic compositions (that album is next on my to-do list, I promise!), this album includes plenty of ice sounds. Most notably, the entire piece Frozen Over is built on my Yosemite frozen lake field recordings (here is the post I wrote about recording these unearthly sounds).

Watershed contains three compositions (Confluences, Frozen Over, and Watershed) that explore water in California. Intertwining audio field recordings with sounds performed on natural materials, glass, and metal, these pieces feature the singular voices, rhythms, and sonic textures of water and ice, while reflecting on tough issues surrounding water in California, such as drought, flooding, and sea level rise. Thus, the album encompasses both my delight in discovering and creating with unique, surprising, and intricate sounds, and my concern for the future of our planet's environments and ecosystems. Each composition develops from a foundation of field recordings. Sounds from oceans, estuaries, lakes, streams, rivers, and caves are highlighted, includingTijuana Slough National Wildlife Refuge, Windansea Beach, Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve, and Lower Cathedral Lake and Tenaya Lake in Yosemite National Park. Emerging from these ambiences, are sounds I played on glass, driftwood, stones, shells, crab claws, bird bones, feathers, kelp flutes, Japanese bowl gongs, Nepalese bells, water, and sand.

Confluences was originally created as an interactive sound/sculpture installation commissioned by the La Jolla Historical Society. In it, I wanted to give voice to the factors that produce extreme high sea level events and to consider vanishing coastal sites and sounds. Frozen Over emerged out of the drought winter of 2011-12, when I was able to record unusual sounds produced by frozen lakes in the high country of Yosemite National Park. Watershed was inspired by hydrology and California landscapes, and considers the journeys of water from precipitation into streams, rivers, lakes, aquifers, and the sea. Audiophiles please note: these pieces are also available from Bandcamp as high definition audio (up to 96Khz, 24 bit). The lovely CD cover art is by Rebecca Haseltine.